One of the many adaptations of that story, this one being the Hammer version. Groovy.

The Phantom is a disfigured musician living underneath the Opera House (hence the title) - in this version, his music was stolen by Michael Gough and he was horribly disfigured by the record press or whatever.

I kind of have to wonder if de Palma drew more from this movie than other versions of the story when making Phantom of the Paradise? It certainly seems that way.

Anyway, it wasn't exactly great, but it has that Hammer charm and it was way way way better than the Andrew Lloyd Webber thing that came out whenever. Man... don't watch that movie.

Yeah, the Phantom himself was pretty gross looking (as opposed to Gerard Butler in the Webber thing, who looked like maybe a bee stung him. Oh my God, ew. He's Gerard frigging Butler. So what if he's got a lump on his face? He's Gerard Butler. I can't stress that point enough). I mean, being Herbert Lom doesn't really help, but he had shit on his face and everything. So you've got that. The story doesn't really work if he doesn't look totally awful.

Although I did wonder why he was so upset about his opera getting stolen. It kind of... sucked. It was about Joan of Arc. Eg. I don't really like opera myself, call me barbaric. I may have mentioned I was tempted to shoot myself whilst watching La Boheme and that was Baz Luhrmann.

But oh well. Stealing from other people is just wrong. Unless it's burning a CD. That's okay. Heh.

Well, anyway, um, yeah, it looked really good, as Hammer films are wont to do, and it had lots of vaguely familiar British people in it. I kept thinking, hey, yeah, I remember that guy, sort of. He was in that other thing, where he played that guy, right?

Yesss. Not great, but entertaining and sort of enjoyable. I kept thinking dude looked like a early version of Michael Myers. Not that they're probably that closely related. I mean, everybody wearing a white mask sort of looks the same, that's the point.

Thai haunted house movie, created by someone... not Thai (I dunno where that guy's from. I assume he's British). But, apparently, based on an old Thai legend. Which would explain a lot actually.

A newlywed couple (named Mak & Nak, which would tend to get irritating) moves into an old house only to discover that the place is haunted by the ghost of Mae Nak who died many, many years ago and is still upset about it. Oh yeah, and her husband was named Mak, which is even more annoying. Nak's Mak is possessed by Nak and Mak. Arg. There are some criminals named Tick and Tock, too, which is almost too much. It's so adorable.

That was funny though. The rest of the movie was a little on the boring side, though. It sort of crawled along, and not that much happened. It wasn't particularly original artistically speaking, and wasn't really very interesting.

Also, it was translated from English, to Thai, and back to English so the subtitles are a little... weird. They make sense but they're kinda funny. (Pointless story: One time I was watching some movie... I think it was The Living Daylights... no, wait, it was the one with Christopher Walken, but anyway, I was futzing with my remote and turned on the Thai subtitles just to see what would happen and they're weird man. There are subtitles when there's no talking and numbers and stuff in there that just don't match up with the dialogue... stuff like '30 grams' and that. Drug deal?)

Yeah, so a little more traditional than some other things. The ghost obeys the laws of being a ghost. Sort of. That's probably cos it's a folk tale or whatever.

Supposedly there are a couple other versions of the story on film too. I ran into Nang Nak by Nonzee Nimibutr (I've heard of that person!), which is supposed to be good. I guess. I don't know, I can't tell by the poster. Ah well.

Okay, that was weird. Don't get me wrong, I liked it, but it was really, really weird.

The life of this guy who has an extraordinary sense of smell and, in order to make the most powerful perfume in the world, he has to learn how to preserve the scent of people. Sound fuckin creepy? He extracts the scent of the beautiful girls he murders and eventually puts this perfume together. It really is the strongest perfume in the world.

I thought the concentrated smell of a person (a bunch of people, actually) would be totally disgusting, but apparently not.

So that was pretty majorly fucked up, but very good. It's hard to do smell in a movie because, obviously, films are visual, but they do it extremely well. The smells in the movie are revoltingly vivid and weirdly poetic or something.

And I liked that it was fucked up. It went above and beyond the limits of twisted, for me, and certainly did stand out.

It was a weird jumble of stuff, too. It wasn't always creepy and horrible. Sometimes it was kinda funny. Or maybe that was just Dustin Hoffman. Holy Jesus he was bad. He reminded me of Al Pacino in The Merchant of Venice, only much much worse. And he and Alan Rickman are starting to look eerily similar, but we'll not go there right now.

The main guy, Ben Whishaw, never seen him before but he was really good. He barely said two words in the whole movie, the character has no social skills, but he was really good. Creepy as hell. Most people without social skills are a little bit creepy to me anyway, but... well...

Um, yeah, a little on the startling side, but what do expect from a movie rated for 'aberrant behaviour involving nudity'. Weird, weird weird.

Yeah, it looked great, it was wacky enough to keep me interested, the acting outside of Dustin Hoffman was good (inside of Dustin Hoffman it's too dark to tell?). So... good movie. But weird.

Part seven, right, so I think Corey Feldman's character tied him to a big rock beneath the lake in the last one. Right? I don't remember. Yeah, that's right.

Anyway, in this one he gets out. Big surprise. Um, there's this psychic chick who unleashes him accidentally. And then he goes around killing people for a while.

Not really a lot of point in ranting about this one cos it's the same as all the other ones, but I'll try.

Point number one: This one wasn't as gory as some of the other ones, and the methods of dispatching teenagers weren't quite as interesting. I was disappointed.

Point number two: Um... well, the last one was vaguely amusing and this one wasn't. There was nothing funny about it.

Point number three: Despite the lack of gore and funny stuff, the filmmakers remain equally incompetent.

Point number four: And the acting still sucks.

Oh yeah, and there was this lady with really, really scary hair. Her face was really weird lookin too, but her hair was even more disturbing. My friend said she looked like the Predator, only she didn't have the groovy Predator dreads or whatever.

Yeah, the Predator is pretty cool. I was going to draw the Predator in my notebook, but I couldn't really remember what it looked like. It turned out looking remarkably like a Wookiee. So I drew the Alien instead.

Oh God.

Yep, Friday the 13th Part 7 really did suck. But then what did I expect?

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STATS

Body Count: 16/98Favourite Death: Girl in sleeping bag hit against treeHow they kill him: I don't rememberTo Go: Three more, next one being Jason Takes Manhattan. This one should be interesting

Okay, been busy with holiday stuff, but I'm near finished (hopefully) now, and I can get back to writing about crap. Ahhh. Thank God. Anyway, haven't been online in a long time, so I probably missed some stuff, but I'll try to catch up.

Anyway, this would be the sequel to the anthology Creepshow, featuring only three stories this time (rip off). Whereas the first one was pretty lame but somewhat amusing, this one was just kinda sad.

Not only were the stories dorky and moralistic, the acting wasn't great (this may have been due to the script as well) and the music was ear-bustingly awful.

Okay, the first story "Old Chief Woodenhead" concerns an old couple running a convenience store in a dead town. Nobody is coming to the store anymore. Aw man. But the American spirit perseveres and they try to power through no matter what happens. Anyway, they get murdered by the badass of the Reservation. And then the wooden statue outside the store comes to life and gets revenge. Cool.

Okay, second one is called "The Raft" and is about a bunch of teens who go out to have sex and smoke pot on a raft in the middle of the lake, but get attacked by some kind of sea blob. Actually, I think it was a tarp. Creeped me out a little bit only because I've been in that situation (not the smoking pot/having sex part, but the being trapped on an island by a flesh eating sea monster).

"The Hitchhiker" is about a woman who runs over a hitcher in her haste to get home (she's having an affair and doesn't want her husband to find out). Anyway, the dead hitchhiker, naturally, comes after her for revenge.

Yeah, that one was okay too. They just put the crappy one at the beginning. And the music... man it sucked. And the animated segments were lame. And Tom Savini looked like an asshole in that big rubber mask. The mock-cryptkeeper banter was also annoying. And half of it made no sense at all.

Watched this when I got home from the other movie on wednesday (hardcore watching, oh yes), whilst feasting upon popcorn flavoured mini rice cakes. Those mini cripsies, you know? Cripsies? Eh, I'm not going to correct that.

Anyway, I saw this once a long time ago, on a double bill with The Invisible Man. This one is about the original invisible man's brother, who uses the magic potion to spring his buddy out of prison (the guy was falsely accused of murdering his brother, so you know he's okay). Unfortunately, he hadn't worked all the kinks out, and his friend goes nuts trying to find the guy what framed him and killed his brother.

And it's got a very young Vincent Price in it. You don't see him until the very end of the movie, and it doesn't sound like him. Weird, weird, weird. At the end, he doesn't really look right either. Very bizarre.

I remember that freaking me out the last time I saw it. That time, I recall I liked this one better than the first one (it's sort of the same movie, just with a happy ending (kinda like The Fly and Return of the Fly - same movie 'cept in the second one the guy doesn't die. Also the 'mishap' isn't really his fault in the sequel, in both cases. Sure, he shouldn't have been dabbling in that stuff, but he took safety precautions).

Anyway, I think the first one holds up better the second time around, but this movie is still sort of amusing. It's kinda silly. Very silly, actually.

As opposed to the other Universal horror franchises of the '30s through '50s, the Invisible Man series goes a lot more for humour. The other ones sort of wound up meeting Abbott and Costello in the end, but it took them long enough. And that wasn't funny, it was just sad.

So, yeah, kind of cute. I like Vincent Price, even though he sounded like somebody else.

Directed by: Francis LawrenceWritten by: Mark Protosevich & Akiva Goldsmith, based on the film Omega Man written by John William Corrington & Joyce Corrington, based on the novel I Am Legend by Richard MathesonStarring: Will Smith, Alice Braga, Charlie Tahan, Salli Richardson, Willow Smith

Went to the screening of this wednesday night, tickets courtesy of the Coast, as per usual (interesting experience, but I'll talk about that later). So this is the third adaptation of the novel to date, having more in common with Omega Man than The Last Man on Earth, with Vincent Price.

Anyway, it's about this guy who invents a sort of cure for cancer. The cure quickly turns into a highly contagious, airborne virus which kills 90% of the population in no time flat. 9% of the survivors turn into ravenous, blood-sucking zombie monsters and eat the remaining 1%.

I went into the movie expecting a real piece of crap, think I, Robot, and it was better than that (score!). A lot is better than that I, Robot movie, though...

But yeah, this one was actually pretty cool - Will Smith was really good (totally nuts but somehow likable) and it just sort of gets in to the ordinary day to day life of this guy.

Oh yeah, and the dog was really fucking adorable. It gets killed though, in a sort of nasty way, which is sad. It was a cool dog.

Anyway, on the downside, they go a little heavy on the sentimentality in the flashbacks, and I didn't really like the sort of almost happy ending (it ends bad for Will, but humanity wins out), much like the end of Omega Man. Last Man on Earth was a little more depressing, having much more in common with the book.

Still, they did think of a lot of stuff that didn't really ever come up in the other adaptations - the animals sort of move into the city, the animals from the Brooklyn Zoo are sort of running around (all CG, of course), the streets are grown over. Cool, cool, cool.

And there's even one relatively creepy scene, when he's wandering around in this dark tunnel, before we see the vampires.

That's other really major problem I had with it was the vampires. They didn't show them at all in the trailer (I was all like, where's the vampires at?), because they look like shit. They appear to be entirely CG, and they all look distressingly the same. Apparently all the people infected by the virus had the same body type and bone structure. I guess there was supposed to be a 'leader', but I couldn't tell him apart from the other ones.

When they start to get smart, start fucking around with him, though, they get a little interesting. They're not really as obnoxious as the ones in the novel, and they don't... upgrade.

But anyway, yeah. There's not a whole lot to the movie (which is kinda good in a way - it's nice and short, only like 1 40 or something), and if you go in without terribly high expectations, it's pretty engaging. It also helps if you dig that kind of story, and I do, very much.
END COMMUNICATION

In this one, the King of Far, Far Away dies and our hero, not really king material, has to go get Arthur, the only other heir to the throne. In his absence, the evil Prince whatever, Charming, takes over the kingdom with all his evil friends and cohorts.

Keeps up the high standards of animation and has enough funny stuff in it to keep me moderately amused throughout.

They seem to be trying a little too hard though, I dunno. I don't really remember that much about the last two Shreks, but I don't remember there being that much uplifting moral stuff either.

I think three movies is almost too long to keep up a good vibe (as Alien 3,Halloween: Season of the Witch and At World's End demonstrate). It starts to wear a little thin, get a little distorted. Especially when it comes to something as popular as this (or any of the movies mentioned above).

It gets a little self conscious or something. A little preoccupied with keeping up the feeling, and being better than the last two.

But anyway, it's not bad (unlike Alien 3 and Halloween: Season of the Witch, both of which were pieces of crap). It's entertaining enough, and would probably keep kiddiliwinks amused. If it amuses me, it'll amuse them. My sense of humour hasn't really advanced much since the age of eight.

And of course it's full of pop-culture references and hip, happening music (was it just me, or did I hear the Eels in there a couple of times?), which makes triviaheads like myself feel really good.

Still, not particularly looking forward to another one. Sure, I'd watch it, but four movies is really too much. I'm sorry. It just is. There should be a limit.

Fourth Die Hard movie to date (oh God, please, no more), some people like to call Die Hard 4.0. Is there a Die Hard 4.2? 4.7? 4.8901? That I'd like to see.

Anyway, this time terrorists disable the internet or something and generally fuck things up for everybody. I dunno, they take down the cell phone lines or something (do cell phones have lines?). Those monsters. Oh yeah, and they take John McLane's daughter hostage. Cos they've already kidnapped his wife twice, so that's getting kinda old.

Why do they do this? For the good of America, apparently. So yeah, Bruce Willis turns superhero (?) and stops them, blowing up as many cars, helicopters, bridges, trucks and Foreign people (like, a couple of French mercenaries and Maggie Q) as they can fit into a mere 130 minutes. 130 minutes? Holy shit, that's like, two hours. No wonder.

So that was pretty boring. I used to like action movies but... they're starting to tire me. Darn.

But let us reminisce about the first Die Hard for a moment. In the first one, it was just a bunch of German (were they German? Or Russian? Gruber. German) thieves holding a skyscraper hostage while they robbed the safe.

It was quiet, it was thrilling. Bruce Willis crawling around in the ventilation system with that wife beater and no shoes. Sexy. Alan Rickman. Sexier.

This one is just nonstop action from beginning to end. There's nothing thrilling about it. There's no sense of danger, you know Bruce is going to save the day, trash the bad guys, save his daughter and say 'Yippy-kay-yay motherfucker' at least once.

And that's exactly what does happen. Anyway, two more problems which must be addressed:

Bruce Willis is no longer remotely attractive. Okay, he is, a little bit, deep down somewhere, but his head is slowly merging with his body. Ew. And he's really old. I'm sorry. Okay, Bruce Willis is only fifty-two, but the kind of shit he's doing in this movie should kill him. Really. Jumping off a plane onto solid concrete and running away without any broken legs or anything is just annoying.

Also, the series hasn't had a cool villain since Hans Gruber. No argument. He's pretty much the epitome of cool villains and they haven't been able to match him yet (let's hope they stop here).

Anyway, on the up side, I did like Justin Long, who plays the Mac in all those Apple commercials (you know, "Hi, I'm a Mac" "And I'm a PC!" "Shut up dumbass"). I vaguely remember seeing him in Dodgeball and Jeepers Creepers. He's good, and kinda cute in a Keanu Reeves kind of way. He has a nerdy charm.

Yeah, so, Die Hardererer... possibly better than Die Harderer, actually, yeah, it is better, but still kinda... stupid. And so fucking patriotic. Some funny stuff, occasional amusing dialog, but not that worth it.
END COMMUNICATION

Okay, so the third Spiderman movie, cleverly titled Spiderman 3, tries to outdo the first two movies by having, like, three badguys to deal with.

That friendly neighbourhood spider-man has to confront his inner demons when this goop from space paints his suit black and turns him into a jerk. And M.J. breaks up with him cos he's a dink. And there's this other photographer who's out to get him. And this guy that turns into sand who (hey!) was responsible for spider man's uncle's death. And Bryce Dallas Howard, for some reason. Oh yeah, and the Silver Surfer is back, only this time he's James Franco instead of Willem Dafoe.

Yeah, there's a lot of shit going on. Enough shit to fuel about six movies, actually, and a lot of it doesn't really seem to have any relevance to anything else. It's almost like filler, it doesn't even matter at the end of the movie.

I like Spiderman as much as the next person. I dig Tobey Maguire and think The Octopus is cool. I wish I had eight arms.

But this movie actually succeeded in boring the hell out of me. It's hard to believe that a movie with so much big-budget, web-slinging action could possibly be that tedious, but that's exactly what makes it so dull.

The in-between bits were fairly good. The acting is good (with a cast like that, who can complain?), and a lot of the stuff is eye burstingly funny. That scene with Bruce Campbell. Hee hee.

I was just kind of getting into it and then it would turn into one of the action scenes. I don't really have anything against action scenes. I like action movies. But everything was CG and it wasn't even good. It was at times like that I wondered why they didn't just animate it.

I guess I never really noticed the poor quality of the CG in the last two, but it really bugged me this time around. I almost couldn't watch it. Especially the stuff that just looked like a video game.

Anyway, it's all fairly high concept, the shots look pretty good and the action is, potentially, thrilling, it just looked like shit.

Also, it seemed to drag on a little too much. I mean, when you have seven plotlines, it takes a while to wrap them up. It bored me. I need more emotional stimulation god dammit!

Like I said, they could have spread this out over at least two more movies. So... why didn't they? I guess they were going for broke. Maybe they're not sure they can make any more. Maybe Tobey Maguire isn't signed on for any more movies, maybe they can't get the funding, I dunno.

But now what are they going to do? I mean, they'll be hard pressed to beat this one. They'll need, like, five villains to contend with (whatever shall they do? Are there even five more spiderman villains? I don't really know spiderman. Maybe they could bring back The Octopus. And some of the cooler Batman villains, like the Penguin).

I still kinda like spiderman though. I can't help it, it's still strangely exciting. And I guess I would get hyped up about a Spiderman 4. I'm pretty hyped up about Dark Knight. I want to watch it now, dammit. I could care less about Fantastic Four 3, but I do like the idea of Wolverine.

Part six! Oh God. Okay, what happened in the last one... um... right, after his death at the hands of Corey Feldman in part four, and a bit of a scare at the hands of some impostor in part five, Jason is finally back. He gets reactivated by lightning or something, and goes to terrorize Camp whatever, which has real live kiddies in it for the first time ever.

Yes, he slashes his way through teenagers, punishing them for a variety of sins including but not limited to: fornication, '80s hair, listening to shitty music.

So it's exactly the same as the other five Fridays, only this one seems to have more of a sense of humour than the others.

I mean, after six movies, it's kind of like they're getting a little silly. More self-conscious. The series is starting to go more towards the slapstick, and this one feels almost like a Nightmare on Elm Street movie.

That doesn't make it all that much more interesting to watch, although it does up the entertainment value by about 1.7 points.

Still, there are issues, the biggest of which being small children. Small children are a difficult dilemma in a movie like this, and most of the time they don't show up at all and if they do, there's usually only one who, of course, has to be saved, but doesn't really cause that much trouble.

This movie has a shitload of kids, and after a while you start to wonder, "Why the hell isn't Big J. going for the little tykes?". I mean, sheeyit. He's in a room full of slumbering tots... they're easy to kill. Hell, what's his problem?

Of course, Jason is the Left Hand of God. He only kills people who really deserve it, or, you know, bug him somehow. So, horny teenagers, meddling police officers, greasers and drunken old men. No children. How very noble of him.

Freddy and Michael Myers don't kill little kiddies either, really (although, they aren't above waiting for the kid to grow up and then killing them, but they're immortal).

Speaking of which, Jason's got to be, what, about forty-two by now (he died in 1957, but apparently continued to grow after that point)? I guess he's probably in pretty good shape... although... he wasn't looking too good.

I can't help it, I worry about him.

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STATS

Body Count: 17/82Request Death: Nothing that exciting in this one, actually - I guess decapitating three people in one swing was pretty goodHow they 'kill' him this time: Tie him to a rock at the bottom of the lake. Oh yeah, and a propeller to the faceTo Go: Four more, plus Freddy Vs. Jason. Next one is The New Blood - I seem to remember seeing a bit of it on Spike one Halloween a few years ago

Okay, this is the one where the guy dies and then comes back to life to get revenge on the scummy bastards what killed him and his fiancé. So, he's like a goth superhero. Cool.

And he gets to walk around with a crow like a real badass.

Now. It's probably not very nice to make fun of Brandon Lee, him being dead and all, but he really fucking sucked. Nobody in the movie was particularly good (which may have had something to do with the script), but this guy was beyond bad. He was annoying. His voice bore into my brain like a brainworm. He didn't really talk a whole lot, though...

But he wasn't even hot really. My friend kept saying he looked like Johnny Depp. That's a bit of a stretch. It was mostly the make-up, actually. That shit he had on really wasn't very flattering.

Anyway, enough about Brandon Lee. The story was kind of lame, the writing was even lamer, but the art direction was very pleasing to me.

It was just so overwhelmingly... goth. It looked really cool, the camera work was good, the music was good.

It's just... well, everybody in it was really ridiculous. I mean, the bad guys are making fun of buddy the crow cos he's got funny make-up on, but they're all a bunch of assholes anyway. I mean, they work for a guy who really likes to take people's eyes and dresses... well, anyway.

They were all a bunch of dumbasses. I mock them.

Anyway, it was interesting to watch, in that it's a huge goth icon and (I guess) cult favourite. And it's the same guy who did Dark City, which I am partial to. On the other hand, he also did I, Robot which was a piece of crap.

Moving on, would have made an good music video. Not a music video necessarily, but had there been, say, no dialogue, it would have been much better. I think I could have put up with Brandon Lee that way.

One more question: if it's really about 'true love' and all that like the intro says, and not just about revenge and looking cool, how come the guy came back and not the girlfriend? I kind of have to wonder. I dunno.

So many questions... but never mind. It was okay, I guess. There was lots of action... or something. I don't know.